For those of us who have both cooked and played Mass Effect: we know that calculations in Newtons won't be necessary. In fact, vegetables will counter-act a protein bomb in most dire situations.
As with the grains, I'm going to attempt to restrain myself to categories. As it stands, this will be a multi-part sub-sector, anyway...
There are quite a few that cross over in use from vegetable to starch, or vegetable to protein. We'll talk about those as they come at us. Firstly, major types and thus, cooking styles.
Water-Based, Fleshy: Green/String beans, cucumber, Zucchini, eggplant, other summer squashes (like those ubiquitous yellow ones), to some extent peas and their like, and I'm putting mushrooms here. Generally speaking, these don't require much cooking. Often you lose by over cooking; their texture suffers and they are mushy, all the nutrients wind up in the surrounding liquid, which is often ignored. Sometimes, as in the case of eggplant...over-cooking results in bitterness. As far as seasoning goes, keep it simple. A little butter and salt after steaming, a little bit of fresh herbs (or a pesto) is complementary as well.
Also worth noting! Some of these are warm weather crops (zucchini: Italian, summer. Peas, spring...), so they'll be disappointing this time of year in the supermarket. (Indeed, and very unpleasantly priced).
Mushrooms are a cross-over: They're just as much protein as they are vegetable. They're great if you're looking for something other than chicken (again, right?), and provide high nutrient value for their low calorie density compared to things like ..chicken.
Water-Based, Leafy: Spinach, salad greens, endive, dandelion, kale. We can even go so far as to include things like cabbages and Brussels sprouts. These range in flavor from the light and savory, sweet (sprouts), to nearly meaty in the Tuscan Kale department.
In leaf form, these cook even faster than the fleshy guys (a few minutes on a relatively warm pan). With a variety like spinach, you can eat them both ways, obviously..but when you cook them they make excellent flexible additions to a pasta, or accomp... accompan..the fellows who sit next to our potatoes.
Some things like radicchio don't always cook well. Greens can tend towards bitterness, so a light blanching (super-short pre-cooking boil) can really make those more palatable if you want to use them in that way.
D'accord, if you want brussel sprouts, they're going to take a bit more than sauteeing some leaves. They're very tasty when they've just crisped themselves on the edges. Or, in the case of Belgian Endive...gratineed a la Julia Child.
As always, pick them over, discard tough and woody parts. Cut off stem-ends. Same goes with peeling: If you have to choose between peeling it and eating (and enjoying), or not peeling because you're "supposed to eat the most nutritious part"...You're better off missing a little peel and eating the thing. It's better for you than not at all.
